24 PAGE ANNUAL REPORT
20 pages + cover, finished size 11 x 8.5", saddle stitch, perf, and insert envelope.
Project beginning - 11/18/07
Project complete - 1/18/08
The Barium Springs Home for Children provides a nurturing place for abused and neglected children to live, early childhood development for low income families, and counseling services and foster family programs.
When k2forma was hired to design the annual report for the Barium Springs Home for Children, I began with a meeting to discuss their needs and existing materials. I learned that the organization was looking to shift the focus away from the sadness of the circumstances of their children and students.
As I began to consider how to approach this project, I was thinking about the seriousness of the circumstances in which these children live. But, no matter what, they are still children - this is their childhood. I remember my favorite thing about being a kid was the delight of imagination -- pretending that those pots and pans really were drums, and I was a really good drummer!
I am a fan of the work of Michel Gondry, and I especially loved his film The Science of Sleep. He successfully explores complex characters with uninhibited imagination. The end result is pure delight. This sense of delight and imagination was my goal for this piece.
As I continued thinking about the joys of being a kid and imagining that your stack of couch cushions is really an impenetrable fort, I began to question what ingredients are necessary to allow for such daydreams. Some of the essentials, are safety, security, and love. Without these things, we're just struggling to survive. When children, have safety, security, and love in their lives, they have the opportunity to daydream. This is exactly what Barium Springs offers - safety, security, love, and most important...hope.
We were all kids at one time, and probably said that we wanted to be astronauts or firefighters when we grew up. These fantastic aspirations were the foundation for this annual report. We utilized the real stories of the children and set them against the backdrop of these fantastic aspirations like 'I want to discover dinosaurs' or 'I want to be a doctor'. The result of this extreme juxtaposition was to help these children and their stories become more relatable. While we may not have been through the trials that some of these children have been through, we have all daydreamed about becoming the same things.
The result was a lighthearted and hopeful annual report that was also very connected to the seriousness of the work that Barium Springs Home for Children does.
To learn more about Barium Springs Home for Children, visit http://www.bariumsprings.org.
